International patent application WO 2005092109 describes a method for drying and maturing raw meat products cut into slivers or slices, including the steps of partially drying the slivers or slices under a pressure lower than 75 mbar and a product temperature between −2° C. and 40° C. achieving a reduction of 10% to 40% in weight compared to the weight of the slivers or slices before the partial drying; applying a modified atmosphere to the product, containing not more than 1% oxygen; and maturing the meat products in slivers or slices in said modified atmosphere at a temperature between 0° C. and 40° C. However, that document does not describe a device for implementing said method.
International patent application WO 2008135616 discloses a device for drying and maturing foodstuffs that implements a method analogous or similar to that described in the aforementioned international patent application WO 2005092109. The device comprises a processing chamber connected to conditioning means to create predetermined environmental conditions in its interior, input and output gate devices configured to allow for the orderly input of slivers or slices of foodstuff to the interior of the processing chamber and the output of the slivers or slices of foodstuff from the interior of the processing chamber without altering said predetermined environmental conditions inside the processing chamber, and an inner conveying device installed inside the processing chamber and arranged to orderly convey the portions of foodstuff from said input gate device to said output gate device along a route including several horizontal overlapping conveyor sections actuated in opposite directions. A drawback of this device is that the slivers or slices should be maintained in an orderly formation during their displacement along a path that includes at least the passage through the input gate device, the route along several sections of the inner conveyor, and the passage through transfer devices in order to change from a section of the inner conveyor to the next one, and this greatly complicates mechanisms and makes the apparatus hardly operational.
Patents JP-A-58078575 and EP-A-0691272 describe various appliances for the processing of foodstuffs in a processing chamber wherein modified atmospheric conditions prevail. In the devices of these documents, foodstuffs are arranged on trays, and regulating chambers are used with gate devices at the entrance and the exit of the processing chamber to enable the introduction and extraction of the trays without substantially altering said modified atmospheric conditions. Regulating chambers have an input gate and an output gate, and they are sized to fully accommodate a tray loaded with foodstuffs when both gates are closed. The input and output gates of each regulating chamber are actuated to open and close alternately so that at least one of them is closed at all times. A system of valves is used to alternately match the atmospheric conditions inside the corresponding regulating chamber to the atmospheric conditions inside the processing chamber and outside atmospheric conditions with the actuation of the gates. A drawback of these devices is that, because of the considerable volume of the regulating chambers required to be able to fully accommodate a tray loaded with foodstuffs, the time required to regulate the atmospheric conditions inside said regulating chambers is relatively long, and, when the device is installed in a production line, this limits the advance rate of the trays along the line even if the rest of the devices in the line are capable of higher advance rates.